October 23, 2012

Clouds Under the Bridges by Winterberg is a consistent album both in structure and execution: of its seven ambient tracks none are under five minutes long, none over seven, and all are worth hearing. Hailing from Dresden, Winterberg is a member of Sitar Beat, a world music group, but his solo project prefers tickling the ear to wobbling the head. His album is less a cloud under the bridge than a troll: stop to peer into the
gloom and it instantly drags you into its dark and mysterious world. According to Phonocake netlabel's blurb, he likes to make live recordings with analogue instruments in large spaces such as churches rather than be tucked up in a cosy studio with a warm laptop whilst drinking cocoa, clutching a teddy bear and watching the snow fall outside his double-glazed window. I may have altered Phonocake's blurb a tad.

Despite its optimistic title, the opener, Auf der Helle I, opens a crack in the floor and lets out an underlay of white noise, the sound of far-off manhole covers being dragged who knows where, gentle filter sweeps, and slow sine-wave-ish notes that punctuate the boundless gloom in which something breathes heavily. It's not a dance number. By the end, the synths have lengthened slightly to become bell-like and hypnotic. Believe it or not, it's quite a warm, relaxing track. This is fortunate because Auf der Helle II is more of the same, although its bass digs deeper and there's also a gently descending scratchy synth to signal the end of the proceedings.

The third track, Abend, ignores the usual studio production rules by placing alternating bass pulses to the far left and right of the aural field and leaving the centre to a high-pitched drone. These unprepossessing elements are joined by a noise that is akin to one of the world's most unpopular sounds: the squealing of train wheels as they navigate a sharp curve or even... a bend. (Yes! Pun of the week.) However, the constant panning of this sound and its placement in a cavernous reverb transforms it into a spooky presence that slides from ear to ear. There's no development as such but that doesn't mean it's not an enthralling listen.

Now, here's something that will irritiate music geeks who like to keep their mp3 collection immaculate: a track entitled ...und der Mond scheint in der Finsternis.
That ellipsis is going to drive tag editors insane. The tuneful slabs of pinkish noise, which a fanciful ear might imagine to be robots having a friendly chat, remind me of the previously reviewed Machinarium soundtrack. The slow, deep, bass throbs could further convince that over-imaginative ear that it was hearing a sentient fog-horn. Ambient: the musical equivalent of absinthe.

All of which brings me to declare that despite the lack of human involvement (voices, traditional instruments, etc.), Clouds Under the Bridges is a strangely warm and intimate album. The tracks hit that ambient sweet spot: not so long as to outstay their welcome, but long enough to transport the listener to another world.

Not only that, the fifth track, Septembre, will be clutched to the breast of all those who like Vangelis. A track summary: a keening synth fires long notes off into the distance where they slowly descend or rise into a background of bubbling white noise that sounds like electronic rain. A track suggestion: play it over the opening scene of Bladerunner. Have a listen and see if it brings out your inner Decker:

There's also a video for Septembre that's less exciting than my sci-fi dystopian Los Angeles video idea, but at least this one will prompt you to clean your computer's screen:

Next up is Sonntag, whose chief component is a martial rhythm played on a hollow-sounding synth preset, backed by an organ drone. By rights, the foreboding atmosphere should build into a traditional climax but instead does the opposite when Winterberg suddenly drops the reverb so that the sounds come close to the ear, a clever and unsettling effect that provides a crest of sorts.

Things come to an end with Im Schatten von etwas. Its gritty drone, oscillating synths, haunting pad and sudden pitch changes might prove harsh fare on its own if the previous six tracks had not attuned the listener to Winterberg's soundscape.

If you enjoy this album, please think about sending a thank you email, tweet, IM, poke, pile of high-denomination notes wrapped in brown paper to the talented Winterberg and/or the routinely lovely Phonocake netlabel. There's not much money to be had in the world of Creative Commons music, but a complimentary message left in an inbox could brighten a grey day.

October 16, 2012

The music in Meek, the new album from Bitbasic, is rather like the font used on the album cover: attractive but puzzling at first, and requiring a little bit of work from the audience, after which all becomes clear. Under the guise of Bitbasic, Simon Haycock plays games with the listener. Nearly every track toys with genre, appearing as IDM, perhaps glitch or ambient or even drone: ultimately it's safest to describe the album itself as experimental. What's more, despite the prevalence of digital manipulation, Meek feels organic; there's a looseness to the tempo and sometimes the pitch.

The first track, Superb Owl, begins with a minute of ambient drone (come back, reader, it gets better) supplemented by a ponderous kick/snare rhythm (it improves, I promise) and a few harsh synth explosions (no, really it does get better, honest) before ducking into a quiet, hi-hat free and therefore Radiohead-reminiscent groove (see, I told you). BitBasic then soaks the aural field with full-bodied synthy noises, and a track that looked like being a cool, jazzy groove finally becomes, well, an ambient drone.

Fantasy Pretzel is an IDM workout that refuses to lets its stately guitar hook settle, preferring to break up proceedings with skittish percussion and noises off. Stealth Elk takes an innocent folky mandolin(?) loop, chivvies it along with a pulsing bass, shoves it into a sampler and ravishes it with chops and edits while twirling its moustache. Next up is It Shtill Worksh, which sounds like a 8-bit game soundtrack designer having a bad day with his keyboard's pitch wheel. In other words, this album is all over the place.

Remember that I mentioned that Meek feels surprisingly organic for an electronica album? (I have to ask because the internet has probably shattered your attention span.) Anyway, the album was made as part of the RPM Challenge wherein participants create 35 minutes or 10 tracks of original material in just 28 days. Bitbasic streamlined the process somewhat, eschewing 27 of those days. As he explains on REC 72's release page:

I was not allowed to commit anything to a timeline, and had to play the
whole album by triggering clips in Ableton using my monome, playing live
keyboard, and applying midi automation on the fly with sliders. This
gives the album much more of a live feel, and was refreshing to get away
from the typical DAW timeline.

I bet we're thinking the same thing. An album made in one day should be awful. Let's test that theory:

Theory disproved. As my previous reviews of his work (Grating Rainbows, Leonard and Pixel Mixel) make clear, Bitbasic has jazz-funk in his veins, and Alpha Dromayo's twisted guitar-ish riff, hefty bass boom and understated jerky percussion continues in one of those same veins. However, he also likes to lean on a synth's filter until it overwhelms all in its path, and by the end of this track you'll wonder if you've been tricked into listening to funky ambient drone, a previously unknown music genre. In fact, the whole of Meek is subject to genre spasms. Listening to it is rather like taking a ride in a plush taxi whose onboard computer keeps interrupting the journey with sundry warning noises, whilst the driver periodically bumps along the verge just for the hell of it.

Moving on, Halfway Hut sounds like twenty seconds from a bootleg recording of Led Zeppelin III. The next track, (Have A) Nice Time, will please confirmed Bitbasic fans who need a fix of staccato synths and jiggered-about jazz guitar. Staying distinctly organic and "real", the last note of the guitar melody is so flat it sounds as though the instrument's machine head has had enough and simply can't be bothered to make the effort. Somehow it works and the result is rather soothing. Trust me. You don't? Oh, go on then:

Ah, that feels better. Now, I could waffle on about the remaining four tracks but by now you're either going to take Meek home for an epic tantric sex session or give it a fake telephone number. If you do wake up the next day feeling spent yet satisfied, please think about sending a cigarette or a thank you email or tweet to Bitbasic and/or the excellent Rec72 netlabel.

October 07, 2012

The power of music compels me* to renounce my bid to make CTW the world's first bi-annual blog. Curses. The wielder of the musical taser is one Nit GriT who, from his San Andreas Fault-defying temple in San Jose, jolts the world with, er, jolts of righteous dubstep. "Oh, not dubstep," I hear the internet cry, "Wubs are past their sell-bwy date." Fear not, speech-impedimented planet: Nit GriT doesn't really make dubstep - he makes music. There's quite a difference.

Listen to just about any of the many free tracks that Nit Grit has magnanimously and shrewdly made free to download, and you'll find that he's not interested in making the world's most twisted bassline or the most disembowelling drop. (You can have that last image free of charge.) Rather, he uses the genre's tropes, e.g. a snare on the third beat, two-step shuffles, wobbling basslines and huge bass drops, to support his musical ideas. The bowel-shattering stuff is just an added bonus, although I might think differently were someone to play this at me on Boxing Day afternoon.

The eight free EPs on Nit GriT's website, most of which contain just two or three tracks and thus allow the listener quickly to decide whether the 21st century is to his/her liking, are collectively a delight for fans of down-tempo, twisted electronica. Heavy Machinery is probably the most aggressive grouping, so I'm going to recommend the three track EP, Synthetic Heaven, as the best introduction to the NiTtY GriTtY world. (My laptop's shift key now hates me.) The first track is a phial of medicinal audio:

I've no idea why Soundcloud no longer lets me embed its player, so you'll just have put up with the clunky thing above this sentence. Still, don't let that put you off the music. If you need further proof that NiT GriT is worth hearing, try his fabulous remix of an already good track by Eastern European world music ensemble Stellamara:

It's beyond me why advertising mavens haven't thrown chequebooks at Stellamara and Nit GriT for those six minutes of euphoria.

I'm not going to write about the various albums in my usual detail because I hate computers and I'd rather tie a knot in my unmentionables than wrestle with Typepad any longer than I have to. Suffice it to say that NiT GriT hasn't forgotten the dub element of Dubstep and that if you compile a playlist of all the free tracks he offers on his website, you'll soon be dubstepping through more GriT than the Mars Rover Curiosity. Yes, I just said that. You can't expect good free music tips AND humour.

Judging from his Soundcloud statistics, I'm the last person on the net (apart from you, of course, my trusty reader) to have heard NiT GriT's music. But his increasing popularity doesn't mean that he lives on fresh air. If you like the sounds, please think about visiting his website and - in no particular order - sending an appreciative message; leaving a donation via Payal; or buying a spiffing t-shirt.

July 16, 2012

Hello, children. Let's make a noise. Compilations are not my cup of Assam; they are notoriously hit and miss. However, 80 Hz Sacred Surplus maintains a surprisingly high level of inspiration and is thus worth draining to the dregs. This brew escaped nearly four months ago from the increasingly impressive IDMf netlabel, itself the progeny of the feisty and informative IDM Forums, and is also a product of IDMf's “bass community”, so reinforce your floors before listening.

80 Hz Sacred Surplus shows some thought in its execution: its ten tracks of electronica are not so lengthy that the listener will need a haircut by the time the needle drops off the groove. I'll do the unimaginative thing and count them off, finger by finger by thumb, with the proviso that my limited knowledge of electronica tends to label anything with an electronic beat as IDM, Electronica, Drum 'n' Bass, Techno or Electro depending on the time of day and my blood alcohol level. If you want something calmer from IDMf, please see this dusty review.

We begin with Circus of Mind's downtempo Jiggawatt, which features “yo-yo” filters so prominently I suspect Native Instrument's Massive synth has had its nads mangled. (If I guess wrong, I wouldn't be risking much to bet that at least one of the tracks here uses that ubiquitous box of tricks.) Rather than the expected drum fills, Jiggawatt's relaxed transitions are comprised of rises: a nice compositional touch. A lovely, analogue-ish synth reminiscent of 80's Doctor Who follows an extended breakdown, and is joined by a stereo field plump with chopped-up children's shouts and yells. No, sorry, the chopped-up shouts and yells of children.

Conservations II by Michael Knead opens with a spine-tingling pad whose filters gradually open just in time to usher in a sound so deep and amorphous that it's almost like a bass pad than a bass line. Somehow Mr Knead manages to stop the bass frequencies from swamping the track; there seems to be plenty of room for light percussion and high-pitched synth flourishes. Although it's beautifully engineered, Conversations II is rather anonymous; but at two and a half minutes long, it refreshes the palate.

After a gentle start to the album, Lebeux's Breathless ups the tempo with a metronomic beat, intensifying pads and a drop into classy drum 'n' bass. These elements are joined by panned, echoing vocals, bell-like synths and a memorable slurred synth that sounds as though it's being goosed. The halfway point treats the listener to some lovely synth flourishes. You'd think that the further addition of arpeggiated, delayed synths would prove too much, but an adept spatial mix keeps Breathless sound of wind and limb.

Only You by SB-Six consists mostly of a thumping, staccato bass line and sampled vocals that syncopate with the drums and said bass. As you might guess, it's not a particularly complex track, but it is well done. SB-Six has engineered a track with weight; it'll sound impressive pumping out of a large sound system.

Speaking of which, 80Hz gets more aggressive with the appearance of Lucky One's SuperKontraBass, where a whistling, clapping crowd warns the listener to get ready. The eponymous bass is a nice, halting, electro noise with, I think, a hint of supersaw, but it doesn't justify its name until the bridge, when Lucky One stands on his keyboard and squeezes a thick, low sound out of the speakers. I'd prefer to see this strong mid-section swap places with the flanking techno-ish parts, where a faster tempo paradoxically seems to slow the excitement. However, I also detest oak-infused red wine, so what do I know?

Tapping noises at the start of Qianta's efemeight might fool headphone-wearers into thinking someone is tapping on their cans. The succeeding hypnotic, almost metronomic, mid-tempo rhythm, supported by a subtly pulsing bassline, is like trip-hop with a dash of espresso, if that makes sense. Melodic interest is supplied by panned and delayed burbling synths, which are high- and low-passed respectively, so that they pass like blips in the night. The warm, soothing atmosphere is reminiscent of Lemon Jelly, if the internet goes that far back. It's a beautifully understated track but perhaps needs more development than the occasional reversed beat at the end of a bar.

IG88's Seahorse Paternity Test (Toronto is Broken remix) has something rather weird in it. After consulting Groves, I feel sure in stating that it's actually a human of the female persuasion singing what is technically known as a “song”. Why has no-one tried this before? Anyway, some studio wizardry has married high-passed, affecting vocals to drum and (chewy) bass, resulting in a bouncing baby of a track. It's sophisticated and catchy. Could it be today's recommended track? Ah, the tension...

A big, fat, jolly synth riff is the backbone of Stereoglyph's Cruisin, but the addition of sly piano stabs and a lovely wash of white noise during a breakdown ensures that there's plenty of meat on the bones. At the halfway mark, Stereoglyph opens his filters, so to speak, and we're treated to a wall of wahs, percussion, more white noise and, yup, another synth. Phil Spector would like this.

It's a rare piece of music that can appeal to speedfreaks and hip-hop heads at the same time. With Test Mat, Neuroscientist has, most appropriately, created a (young) Frankenstein's monster of a track. If you're the type of person who likes to hear LFOs and oscillators tortured beyond endurance, strap yourself in. The menacing main riff threatens to wreak havoc with the accompanying rapid percussion, but it keeps being interrupted by a choppy chord (all examples of clever sound design), and later is interrupted by a sharp slice of breakbeat at the end of each bar.

Then, four minutes in, Neuroscientist drops his big, mad hammer of doom and a lumbering hip-hop beat rises from the laboratory bench. Play this amalgamation of IDM & boom-bap to instrumental hip-hop freaks and, especially when the hi-hats kick in, watch them freak out à la Gene Wilder. Two quibbles: Test Mat could lose one of its six minutes and not miss it; the inclusion of a sample from, if I'm not mistaken (I could be), the 1959 album How To Speak Hip endangers the track's CC status. Unless Neuroscientist has clearance for this dialogue, his track really shouldn't be issued under a CC licence.

We Are Made From Soil, according to Concierge_Weetr. Craftily, IDMf have left the most experimental track until last, surmising that the excellence of the other songs will push nervous listeners onwards to a barrel-meets-Niagara-Falls dénouement. You'll hear some devilishly echoing vocals that should never be listened to with a hangover, but you'll also hear eerie pads over a squelchy bass. Not an easy listen but a satisfying one.

The whole album is a treat, but I'll continue a CTW tradition (while pleading to the heavens for netlabels to proffer plain mp3 links as well as all manner of embedded media players) and recommend one track for the "tl;dr" crowd:

If you enjoy the entirely free 80Hz Sacred Surplus, please think about sending a thank you email to the IDMf netlabel and/or the artists involved (details at IDMf). I'm sure they'd love to hear from you.

May 28, 2012

Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations were first published in 1741, and have long been recognised as one of the mainstays of the classical music canon. "So what?" you ask, spraying crisps and beer over your laptop screen. Well, today is a special day for music and for the internet: firstly, you will learn not to talk with your mouth full; and secondly, anyone with an internet connection can now download the "Open Goldberg Variations" for free.

Most classical music enthusiasts with a reasonable standard of living will own a recording of the work; most people who can barely scrape together the cash for an internet connection will not. The Open Goldberg Variations project has tried to remedy the problem. Its proponents thought that music of such quality and importance should be a common inheritance, available to all who wished to hear it.

The thinking behind the project was as follows: Bach's music is in the public domain. Wouldn't it be a nice idea to record the piece to the highest possible standard and then release it to all and sundry under a Creative Commons Zero licence? But who would play the piece? Kimiko Ishizaka, that's who, a renowned award-winning pianist who just happens to live in Cologne, which I've always thought of as the capital of netlabel-land. Wheels within wheels...

But how to pay for the recording? How to finance the studio time and technicians? In short, an appeal at the crowd-sourcing finance platform Kickstarter asked for $15,000, yet raised over $23,000 in just a few days, making the plans more than a pipe dream. Then some wonderful things happened: Bösendorfer sponsored a top-class grand piano, and Anne-Marie Sylvestre, a seasoned sound engineer and producer, offered her services for free. Such largesse meant that the recording could take place at the hallowed Teldex Studio in Berlin.

In other words, talented and committed people have done their very best to make the best possible recording of a truly great piece of music - and then give it away for free. Here it is (if the Soundcloud media player behaves itself, which it often doesn't):

If you wish to download the entire album in one go (mp3s and lossless FLAC files are available), you can visit the Soundcloud page or, even better, go straight to the Open Goldberg Variations download page. You can even write a review *cough* and win a double CD.

You may ask yourself if issuing a recording of this standard will divert money from commercial recordings and publishers. If you do, stop talking to yourself. It's a bad habit. Then forget about piracy. Thieves will always steal from the internet if they can. Don't waste time on those people.

The important people are the potential customers. There are a billion people online who can now hear and own a pristine, high-quality recording of this wonderful work. They won't have to record a low-fi radio broadcast to hear it; they won't have to visit a torrent site and inadvertently spread viruses; they won't carry the psychological stigma of knowing they have stolen something, and they won't have purloined a slice of someone's wages. No, they will be dignified, legitimate owners and listeners and, if Bach has anything to do with it, will learn to love the music and, lo and behold, become fans of his other works. This increases the likelihood that they will purchase recordings of his music, attend concerts, and even - I can barely credit it - play the actual music on actual instruments made out of actual wood and stuff.

This recording will eventually percolate its way around the world, finding a home in schools, universities, homes and mp3 players. If just one per cent of one billion people become fans of Bach's music because of this recording, classical music publishers will have a potential ten million new customers.

But if you own Ms Ishizaka's recording, why bother to buy another version of the Goldberg? Well, that's the beauty of it: every pianist has a different approach to the work. There are amazingly different versions of the work, as Glenn Gould, Andras Schiff, Murray Perahia and many others have demonstrated. It's like Pokémon: gotta catch 'em all. Ahem.

Just as excitingly, Musescore has created a brand-new score of the work after making their initial efforts available to academics and Bach enthusiasts for revision. This too will be online for anyone who wants it.

While I'm on this topic, it has always surprised me that classical music has not taken advantage of Creative Commons licences. Surely there must be many music undergraduates and post-graduates who could record, for example, famous/obscure chamber music and release the work on a classical music netlabel (if there were any)? Nowadays, recording software is powerful and cheap, and the means of distribution is the PC, laptop and smartphone. Someone might even record the Goldberg on the harpsichord...

If you have enjoyed the Open Goldberg Variations, please consider thanking its instigators for their energy and foresight. After that, say thank you to J.S. Bach, who is doubtless quaffing beer from a freshly-tapped barrel, moaning to his brother about the shocking cost of import duties, and saying what he really thinks about having to write long, obsequious letters to obdurate royalty.

May 27, 2012

...and congratulations to all other German football fans. I'm interrupting my publishing schedule to post the above screenshot which proves that The World's Most Important Free Music Blog* has been featured on Breitband, the highly-respected Deutschlandradio Kultur (German state radio) programme devoted to media and digital culture. Yes, I was flown out on the express instruction of Angela Merkel just to be photographed strolling along Germany's sun-kissed north coast and ignoring an autograph request from an annoying child.

It's interesting to note that co-presenter Volker Tripp, who is heavily involved with the excellent iD.EOLOGY netlabel, favoured CTW's highlighted pop, rock and folk songs and mostly eschewed dance and electronica, although this was possibly due to time constraints and a wish to appeal to a large audience. (I apologise for not knowing whether his velvet-tongued co-presenter was Julia Eikmann, Jana Wuttke or Anja Krieger.) Equally notable was the number of songs with vocals (all sung in English). This tells me three things:

Creative Commons music would be more popular if there were more rock and pop netlabels.

Germany is enviably bilingual.

There are parts of Europe where the mullet can still be seen in the wild.

Germany has an endearingly high regard for Creative Commons culture. I've always thought of the country itself as Netlabel Zentraal; it's no coincidence that Beat Magazine is probably the only major music magazine that treats the CC netlabel scene seriously. It's an honour to be a tiny part of that culture.

Please click on the illustration to visit Breitband and hear the show, or listen below:

May 19, 2012

Today is Culture Freedom Day - but you already knew that, didn't you? I certainly did, and in no way did I stumble upon it by accident, he said unconvincingly. The 19th of May has been plucked from the Official Big Book of Open Source Gregorian 365-day Calendars to celebrate Free Culture worldwide. To steal/borrow/adapt-with-the-full-permission-of-the-creator:

Culture Freedom Day is a worldwide celebration of Free Culture. Initiated in 2012 by the same organization promoting Software Freedom it aims at educating the worldwide public about the benefits of using and encouraging Free Culture as well as providing an international day to serve as a platform to promote Free Culture artists. The non-profit organization Digital Freedom International coordinates CFD at a global level, providing support, giveaways and a point of collaboration, but volunteer teams around the world organize the local CFD events to impact their own communities.

We have envisioned Culture Freedom Day as a day where Free Culture art is exhibited, as much as possible, and celebrated. Be it a photo exhibition, a concert, playing music in the streets or organization movie screening, as long as it is clear to the public that what you are showing is Free Culture you would be right on target. Of course a combination of all forms of Free Culture art is fine too, with short discussions about the definition of Free Culture, how to make one's work Free Culture and where to find Free Culture online. The cherry on the cake would be to showcase one or several Free Culture artists who would happen to live in your area. We have set up a special section in our forum for such match making opportunities.

Culture Freedom Day will be hosted annually starting on Saturday May 19th, 2002 and probably every third Saturday of May each subsequent year.

Our Vision

Our vision is to empower all people to freely connect, create and share in a digital world that is participatory, transparent, and sustainable.

Objectives

To celebrate culture freedom and the people behind it

To foster a general understanding of culture freedom, and encourage adoption of free culture licenses

To create more equal access to opportunities by growing the body of cultural work accessible to all

To promote constructive dialogue on responsibilities and rights in the cultural society

To be inclusive of organizations and individuals that share our Vision

To be pragmatic, transparent, and responsible as an organisation

I hope you read and memorised every word of that; I will be asking questions later. Here is a reward for slogging through that worthy (and inspiring) prose: another green graphic, beneath which is Pixel Mixel by the very talented BitBasic, a song that encapsulates all that is good about free culture in five minutes of superb jazzy, breakbeat-ish, glitchy electronica. (Original review here.) See you next year.

May 14, 2012

This site is known around the globe* for its venerable dictum regarding dance music:

All dance tracks are a third too long.

Yes, I realise that dance tracks traditionally include extended, rather plain intros and outros so that DJs can beatmatch their sets, but the fact remains that most dance tracks, like terrorists, carry excess baggage. However, after intensive research on the subject, CTW can now announce with some certainty that there is a corollary to my (in)famous axiom:

All dance tracks are a third too long unless I say so.

I think that's reasonable. *cough* Anyway, today's Spring Clean gasps over the finishing line at a not-going-to-the-Olympics time of 8'33". Why on earth is it worth hearing? Well, there are two types of dance tracks in this world:

Bangers

Groovers

Ask Wikipedia if you don't believe me.** Bangers are generally aggressive, high-tempo, and replete with risers and drops designed to prompt wrecked nightclubbers to expose their armpits like they just don't care. Groovers are the beta males of the dance music world: they observe from afar and then quietly seduce the nubile blonde whilst the alpha male is combing his chest hair. In other words, they start off fairly sedately, gradually adding percussive (and percussively melodic) elements until they achieve an irresistibly catchy rhythm.

Too Much Botox by Alex Medina, a talented and busy DJ-producer originally from Las Palmas in Las Islas Canarias (the Canary Islands if you English speakers insist on getting all Falklandish about it) is an object lesson in squeezing disparate elements into a rapid groove. For example, the first things other than percussion to appear on the track are some lovely, slow synth chords that you'd expect to hear in downtempo jazz. When those same chords are then distorted, panned and moved back in the mix while some bass pops up, your ears will start to twitch.

Seductive things keep appearing throughout: at the two-minute mark, what sounds like a sitar chord acts as an unexpected bridge; tablas/congos drop in at 3.12; vocal snippets punctuate the track here and there, and at 5.50 a simple bassline just squats on the dance floor and digs in. In fact, there are numerous moments when the listener will feel that the bass and/or the main rhythm has kicked in, only to be surprised when it keeps getting just that little bit funkier. As I said: a groover.

This skilful and pleasurable funky minimal comes in a pack of five, the Punos Punof EP, and derives from the credit-to-the-internet Unfoundsound/foundsound netlabel. CTW is not unfamiliar with this excellent supplier of Creative Commons music, as you can read here and here.

You want the album, don't you? Hmm. You'll need to concentrate. In its wisdom, Unfoundsound does not have separate pages for each album in its catalogue. Instead you must visit its "Un releases" section, select albums "39-45" and then choose "unfound42", where you will finally alight on a little place reserved for the Punos Punof EP. Individual mp3s and flacs, and a zipped album will then be yours to keep. Should you need more of Sr. Medina's music, look for his Octupus Vulgaris EP in Unfoundsound's catalogue: it's number 45.

If you enjoy the free music, please consider thanking Alex Medina/Unfoundsound for their efforts or buying something from Unfoundsound's commercial wing, Foundsound.

May 11, 2012

In their more spiteful moments, people who hate folk music dream of the day when nasal-voiced troubadours do a Hendrix and set fire to their mandolins. With Burn, the second track of his unpredictable UV EP, Matthew Stenning almost grants a few wishes by deciding that the perfect percussive accompaniment to a lilting guitar riff is... a box of matches and a lighter. Ah, electronica: musical pyromaniacs sneer at all other genres.

The very nicely handled percussion is soon joined by a phasing pad, another stringed instrument, lashings of reverb, a reversed tape effect, an engaged telephone tone, a Moogish synth, a bit of looping and a complete non-sequitur of an ending: a ringing telephone. All this should sound like a dog's breakfast (by the way, has anyone ever heard a dog's breakfast?) but Mr Stenning, a UK-based producer, knits it together with aplomb. (Has anyone ever seen a plomb?)

Anyway, I hope the first appearance at CTW of Typepad's ugly, life-draining media player doesn't spoil your enjoyment of this lovely example of folky electronica:

If you liked it, good news: the Creative Commons music world knows full well that there are six more imaginative tracks to be heard on the UV EP, hosted at the excellent, sadly expired but joyfully ransackable Plainaudio netlabel. Now you know too.

May 02, 2012

Having shredded my eardrums during the years I scoured the matrix for good free music, I've come to two conclusions:

1. What did you say? Huh? SPEAK UP, YOUNG MAN.

2. There seems to be a preponderance of electronica, techno and ambient music in the Creative Commons music world.

The latter conclusion is unsurprising. Perhaps it's because of the affinity between music software, the internet and nerds open-minded individuals that most albums sound like they were made with a laptop. There's nothing wrong with that; one of the joys of CC music is that anything goes, and it's always fun to hear musicians experiment with new sounds and genres.

However, one does sometimes hanker for stuff that sounds as though it was made outside the spare room/attic/dungeon; stuff that involves strumming, plucking and blowing. Yes, I'm talking about nipples old-fashioned things like brass sections, guitarists and real drummers.

Look no further than a track picked from the compilation album Tiuqottigeloot (netBloc No. 24), namely:

Juan Naveira and his France-based collective, Juanitos, have been blasting out, and I quote, "Calypso, rock'n'roll, reggae, Cuban sound, bossa nova, reggae, gospel, electronica, soul, boogaloo, jazz!" for nigh-on twenty years. As you've just heard, they're rather good at it, although the vocals can be a little rough and ready.

Want some more? Ahem. I hope you're planning some beach parties in the near future. There's the 2009 album, Best Of, whence originally came Hola Hola Bossa Nova; the follow-up called, er, Best of Volume 2, and the latest, Welcome to the House of F.U.N.:

It's as retro as it gets, isn't it? As is well known, when the French start to boogie the result is always ever-so-slightly naff, then kooky, and finally triumphantly joyful and funky. Juanitos epitomise this noble tradition and long may they do so. Try these three albums (there are another three at Jamendo) and see if your hips behave. EDIT: Jamendo seems a bit under the weather today. If you want to download the albums, use the "download" link on The Best Of, Vol. 2 and visit the other albums from within Jamendo. Sorry...

Remember, these songs are CC-licensed, so they are free to download - but please contact Juanitos if you'd like to do anything commercial with them. I'm sure they would welcome some appreciative emails (and even cash) to distract them from the doubtless riveting slanging match televised debate between Messrs. Hollande and Sarkozy.

My thanks to Mike at BlocSonic for his heroic work in compiling 93(!) albums full of free music. If your mp3 player is looking a little chubby these days, pop over to his awesome website and give it a workout.

(Apologies if the Jamendo players don't appear in Google Reader or on phones. I'm an idiot, remember?)

April 30, 2012

To start what I'm pompously calling a "Spring Clean", here's a lyrical and witty paean to...oh, don't look at me like that. Publicising this song is a time-honoured internet tradition. It's a ditty beloved by free-thinkers and divorce lawyers around the world. Oh, and it's very NSFW. You've been warned.

April 29, 2012

*accepts flowers from little girl pushed to the front of the stage by obsequious parents*

Thank you. Right, to business. I stopped reviewing free Creative Commons albums because my health was poor and because it took far too much time to find something that I liked enough to review. However, some great music often missed out on the CTW caress because, for example, there was only one track on a perfectly competent album that appealed to me, or I simply couldn't spare the time and/or energy to blog. I must also admit that I am lazier than a teenage sloth.

Having once been at the pointy bit of the sharp end of the cutting edge of the avant-garde, arty-farty zeitgeist, I am now so out of touch with the free CC music scene that MySpace laughs at my flared jeans. Despite this decrepitude, over the next few weeks I shall post some of those dusty, ancient tracks deserving of an outing. I hope you enjoy them. The Creative Commons world is very friendly; I hope you enjoy exploring it.

I might also scatter a few familiar CC tracks among the newbies because it's my blog, so there, and Facebook hasn't yet offered enough money to corrupt me. Zuckerberg, I want my chateau.

After all that, and because this blog is perverse at the best of times, here's something that's already been mentioned. It's a delicious slice of melodic IDM, and comes from a lovely four-track EP (see review).

As I leave the stage, dodging bouquets, sovereigns and offers of marriage, please consider retweeting (I'm @catchingthewave - there is no "s" on the end because Twitter can't cope with 16 letter names) or reFacebooking or regurgitating what you've read to anyone - friends, family, netlabels, music blogs, the Inland Revenue - who you think might be interested in (legitimately) free music.

At the very least, you can enjoy yourself by telling me that I have dreadful taste in music and then go on to castigate my writing, my appearance and my very existence. After all, it's what the internet is for.

June 20, 2011

It won't come as any surprise to you, but Catching The Waves has come to the end of its natural life. There are two main reasons for this:

My health is woefully erratic;

Despite a desperate tussle with the laws of physics, it still takes me hundreds of hours to listen to hundreds of albums.

While running Catching The Waves, I've been lucky enough to have found some excellent free music and corresponded with terrific people from all over the world. I hope my readers have managed to do the same.

If you still thirst for legally free music, I can't do better than recommend my sidebar entitled "General Netlabel Sites", where you'll find some useful links to netmusic portals. If you're brave enough to explore the CTW archive, you'll find articles about these portals, explaining what makes them so good. The internet has not deemed Catching The Waves worthy of the same, so I'll have to beat my chest and say that this blog's chief strength was its devastatingly potent monkey-god sex appeal insistence on publicising albums whose chief virtue was the high standard of music rather than the sale price of zero. I trust that the emphasis on quality (and not my inherent laziness) explains CTW's slothful publishing schedule.

I'll keep the site online for a few months so that visitors can fight with the blog's architecture and extract what free music they can. My apologies for any dead links.

No doubt like you, I've been very frustrated with CTW's technological shortcomings. The blog format is quite a straitjacket for someone who would have liked to have a far more welcoming and comprehensive website (and escape this maximum-security institution for distressed gentlefolk). However, I am to computers what radiation is to the environment.

So, in a seamless segue, please allow me to recommend one last free netmusic portal. Netlabelism advertises itself as a "magazine for quality netaudio". Its eighteen-strong staff, composed of netlabel owners, musicians and geeks, backs up this claim by offering (deep breath): articles, reviews (by genre) of free albums, monthy compilations, interviews, a radio station, a recommended album of the month and, for those who want to give their ears a rest, a recommended album cover of the month. The attractive website is updated almost every day and (netlabel owners, please note) is it easy to use and explore. I hope the site goes from strength to strength. It also gets the last-ever place in netmusic's most hallowed arena: CTW's "General Netlabel Sites" sidebar. Ahem.

Before I close my Twitter and Facebook accounts and cryo-freeze Catching The Waves, I must issue a sincere thank you and apology to all the many artists who released their free music on netlabels or who, very flatteringly, submitted their albums to me in the hope they might get a review. Thank you so much for your effort, optimism, talent and ingenuity. May you continue to make the music you want to make. I hope it's of some comfort to know that for a few years I listened to just about every free release in the netlabel world and elsewhere. No, really, I did. (You do the maths.) I must have been mad...

As the light dims, it's time for one last free track from my "All the great tracks from very-good-but-not-consistently-great albums that I was too pernickety to review" vault of files. Year's End comes courtesy of ANgR MgMT, an artist from Arizona who, despite a sticky Caps Lock button, has crafted a beautifully meditative piece that sounds like Bach discovering the world of softsynths and then deciding to bring things to a close in a flurry of glitches because he had no more worlds to conquer. It's a fitting end for the world's worst free music blog, don't you think?

March 05, 2011

Life's hard, I can tell. Money is tight. Tinned spaghetti is starting to look good. You're selling your cat's kittens on eBay. You can keep flipping your underwear inside-out and back again for only so long. The pressure is telling. You need something cool and soothing to mop your fevered brow. Look no further than the free Grey-Purple EP by Fiji (the musician, not the idyllic South Pacific nation) and its eight tracks of ambient-tinged trip-hop.

But before you gleefully throw away your "Arse-crack available for bicycle stand" sign, please note the following. In an attempt to make the claps pop and the kicks thump, Fiji, who comes straight outta Orenberg, has overdone it slightly. Consequently, follow Uncle CTW's advice and adjust your media player's preset to "Agnostic" or something equally neutral that will stop your car's sub-woofers from blowing its doors across the street.

Today's recommended track is Hour of Glances and Kisses (feat. Kammerton). The plucked guitar and sultry, breathy female vocal that start the track are subject to a familiar production trick, apeing a lo-fi AM broadcast by cutting the low & high frequencies and keeping the stereo stream narrow. Fiji then simultaneously hits the listener with the full audio spectrum and widens the sonic field to a warm, chorus-y, your-ears-are-bathing-in-chocolate scrumptiousness. It never fails to work, both aurally and emotionally. The track then indulges in some very slow synth arpeggios that will remind those with receding hairlines of Apollo 440, and a raucous, rising synth tone that eventually dissipates under the weight of the fluffy pads and vocals.

But guess what? You can't listen to the whole track unless you download the entire album.

(IDIOTIC EDIT: Hour of Glances and Kisses is available from Fiji's own Soundcloud profile. Thankyou to @Lukelibrarian for the help. He's a lot better than Jacasta Nu. Now, listen to Jedi's Fiji's deft handling of filtered vocals:

Granted, there is a sampler for the EP, and it's enlightening to read the comments on the Soundcloud player, but I'm always surprised at the ingenious tactics that otherwise excellent netlabels (such as the fantastic and thoroughly recommended Siberian/Muscovite Electronica) will adopt to prevent listeners from hearing their music as easily as possible. There is no need for Tal-like complexity or Petrosianesque obfuscation.

If you've simply pressed "Play" and slumped back onto your crisp-infested and beer-stained sofa, the first thing you'll hear (after a Slav Barry White intoning, "Elyectrrronicah") is Copy Paste Feelings, a pleasant blend of filter-swept doo-wop vocals and easy-paced trip-hop. The same formula is used for much of Grey-Purple, the album, and Grey-Purple (feat. Long Arm), the title track of said album, so expect to hear plenty of white noise and dollops of piano, rhodes piano, subtle pads, drones and the occasional trip-hop stutter.

The third track, Faked Imaginary Freedom, is slightly more funky. The claps are rather intrusive but the gorgeous sampled/chopped pads make up for them. Fiji beds the rhythms in a hypnotic swathe of synths and pianos; when the beats disappear, as in the latter stages of the trumpet-flecked Ocean In My Head, one feels as though the music is even better for it.

Frustratingly, the pseudo-DJ-Shadow On 17th Floor has drool-worthy sustained piano chords, but would be much better without the half-hearted breakbeat-and-clap accompaniment.

Next up is Smiles Before Bedtime (smiles during bedtime are better), which essays a lovely descending piano line in tandem with some crunchy white noise and marvellously delicate synth chirrups. Again, not too sure about the kick and clap - but bear in mind that I listen to all my music on an iTincan - so adjust to taste.

Night of White Flies - not the most enticing of titles - contains a snippet of a classical recording that I trust is old enough to be out of copyright. Mind you, Fiji may have recorded it himself and aged it in the studio. Music software can do almost anything nowadays, bar curing Country & Western. You'll like it if you like crunchiness, guitars, scratches, violin solos and Mom-and-Pop vocals.

Grey-Purple is a rare thing in the world of electronica/trip-hop; it's so warm and fluffy that it encourages one to cuddle the nearest thing to the listener, whether that be a spouse, teddy bear or the biscuit barrel. Personally, I think it's just a sneaky Russian trick to save on heating bills.

If you like the album, please drop a "thank you" email in Electronica or Fiji's inbox and/or empty your glass and throw it in your fireplace.

January 23, 2011

It's a mystery to me how Luxus-Arctica netlabel managed to take this photo of CTW's reception suite. The guards tell me that the CCTV footage went offline at a crucial moment. The only physical evidence of their break-in was the hundreds of dead starlings in the street below. Strange.

It won't have escaped your attention that computer wizardry is rampaging through electronica, IDM, minimal and hip-hop, where it's common for percussion one-shots and layered synths to be sampled and chopped to death, but I remain surprised by how relatively few artists delight in mangling acoustic instruments and "found" sounds. There's a delicious, malicious joy to be had in hearing a familiar and/or traditional sound getting kicked up the backside by music software.

I imagine that Erik Nilsson must wear a virtual pair of hobnailed boots as he stomps around Stockholm, because the eight marvellous tracks that constitute his restrained, gentle and ingenious Recollage are an acoustic mangler's delight; he makes the old-fashioned sound delightfully modern. Peruse the back cover of his album and you'll find the following:

Recollage is a development of simple musical elements and ideas towards greater complexity and richness of detail using real and sampled instruments, assorted acoustic sounds, and synthesizers & audio manipulation techniques.

Honestly, I don't know why I bother. How am I supposed to waffle on at (very great) length about records if the musicians have already written a cogent summary of said album and, what's more, in better English than yours truly can muster? What a cheek.

The opener, Into Motion, uses a sneaky compositional trick - one used to great effect by Trentemøller on Take Me Into Your Skin - whereby various elements are added one by one to create a wall of sound that, at the crescendo, drops away completely to be replaced by a quiet, fast-paced rhythm. The unexpected dynamics will tug at your ears. The track is an enticing blend of upbeat, sparkling guitar, somnolent piano/harpsichord and some ambient excursions. Its cheerful and gentle soundscape will perhaps remind readers of another Luxus-Arctica album, Global by The Lights Galaxia, reviewed here.

Timepiece features a grandfather clock's two-note chime up front and centre (and slightly too loud, methinks). I doubt whether the clockmaker would approve of how Mr Nilsson makes it repeat, stutter and pan all over the place, but I approve of the mangling, especially when it's accompanied by a gently picked acoustic guitar, a cut-and-paste harmonica and ambient crackles.

The first thirty seconds of Rumore del Roma explain why this album is such a treat for the ears: you'll hear a ghostly piano; the distant wailing of guitar feedback; a chopped and reversed bit of sound; cheerful guitar strumming; the dusty pops and grumbling of old vinyl; and the creaking of an unoiled door hinge that slurs and slows down into a snare drum roll that kicks off some semi-distorted, mandolin-backed trip-hop. There's also a violin stuffed in there somewhere, courtesy of Sofie Louzou. Phew. Then, after a couple of minutes of pleasurable head-nodding, most of the sounds fade away until only the ghostly, plaintive piano can be faintly heard on the right-hand side of the stereo field. A few bars later, it's joined by a toy-like xylophone, only this can be heard up close and on the left. It's the thoughtful treatment of such ostensibly simple elements that make the album a pleasure to hear. Try it yourself:

Erik Nilsson - Rumore del Roma

No, wait. You can't. Luxus-Arctica is like America's Liberty Bell: an inspiring symbol of independence that can't make a sound because it's cracked. L-A will give you the whole album free of charge but won't supply links to individual tracks. *bites knuckles, screams* Gentlemen, please rethink your policy.

15 Minutes of Boredom might be retitled as 2 Minutes, 15 Seconds of Bewilderment. I can't explain how such diverse elements as movie dialogue, a repitched, reversed and disrespected guitar riff, heavy breathing, a high-passed filter sweep (and the occasional interjection of Fred Astaire's name) can in any shape or form constitute music; but they do. Hands up who would like to see Erik Nilsson's workflow. Yes, me too. Ableton or Logic or Cubase and an MPC, do you think? Knowing my luck, it's probably done with witchcraft, beer and Lego.

I rather like the compressed story that can be inferred from a song called Old Piano/Bad Back. What's even more likeable are the ticking clock intro, the fluttering flute, various ominous thumps and scrapes, a thoroughly unsettling vocalised noise and, best of all, the appearance of a slide guitar redolent of Ry Cooder's soundtrack to Paris, Texas. (A quick aside - we Creative Commons music fans, though fans of electronica, minimal, etc., are starved of guitar music. Please, riffers of the world, unite: you have nothing to lose but your mullets.) It's a slow, solemn, piece of ambient electronica until someone whispers "Let's go!" in your left ear, and the guitars get up off their porch seats to welcome the arrival of a kick drum. All of a sudden, the piece transmutes into neo-Hillbilly and threatens to get epic. Disappointingly, it goes back into its shell soon afterwards, but it's still a terrific track.

There's a similar flirtation with grandiosity in the title track, Recollage. It starts with manipulated kitchenware samples (I'm fond of how the sharpening of a knife doubles as a very lazy hi-hat), a fuzzy bass, inoffensive guitar doodlings, and a door opening and closing; it continues with a beautifully apt Moog-like synth, an upright piano and a not-so-happily-mixed snare drum; and it threatens to break out into a sweeping piece of Kate Bushness before fading to an ambient burble.

To my mind, the ghosts of Kate Bush (consider the gentle tempo, the mandolin and the sample of a cocking rifle in her Army Dreamers) and Pink Floyd flit in and out of some of these tracks. I get a Floydian tang from the mournful, descending guitar and bass lines to Tail Lights; as the tempo picks up and morphs into light rock, one half expects some Roger Waters kill-yourself-now-because-life-is-a-cosmic-joke lyrics and a searing guitar solo from Dave Gilmour. Instead, the track shies away from the bombastic and stays true to the album's intimate milieu with some subdued glitching.

Finally, imagine you're ten years old and have just got your hands on your first guitar. It's a clapped-out acoustic, half the strings are missing and those that remain are tired, saggy and barely in tune. Then imagine that you've just learned to play a riff that reminds you of Marc Bolan's T-Rex and, pleased with yourself, you play it repeatedly. Your pre-pubertal friends form a rhythm section by slapping cardboard boxes and bending rulers on table edges. Welcome to the first half of the pertinently-named Little Demon. Spent, you stop playing only to hear music floating across the road from that creepy house with the drawn curtains. It's barely audible but it's definitely someone playing a spooky motif on an ambient pad preset over and over again. Welcome to the coda of Little Demon.

Surprisingly, this album reminds me of, would you believe it, the ghost stories of M.R. James, which often tease their overly logical Edwardian protagonists by suggesting that there is something disturbing lurking over the brow of the next hill - if only they care to look. Thanks to his harnessing of modern techniques to long-familiar sounds, and the inclusion of the odd gasp, wheeze, scrape and scratch, Mr Nilsson's work shares the same ambivalent qualities. Indeed, I hope I'm not doing him a disservice by suggesting that parts of his album would do very well as soundtracks to James's tales.

If you fall in love with Recollage, please remember to send a "thank you" email/cash/eye of newt and toe of frog to the talented Erik Nilsson and the estimable, double-barrelled Luxus-Arctica netlabel.

January 17, 2011

Listening to the various tracks from a newly-discovered good album is like seeing familiar numbers pop up in the first few seconds of a national lottery draw. The first appearance is pleasing and so is the second; the third gives you a sense of satisfaction and achievement; two more good ones appear and you jump on your chair; one more pops up and you scream at the TV/stereo/neighbourhood that you'll devote your life to living in a huge chateau others less fortunate than you if the last two numbers are the ones you want. If you're like me, you'll end up with a lingering sense of the futility of life and a muddy sofa. But fear not - at least CTW has some free CC music for you to hear after you've stopped shaking your fists at fickle Fate.

Your post-lottery placebo takes the form of Bu-Bu-Bubbles by Foam, an English musician about whom I know little, for which I blame Wikileaks. If only he'd insulted a potenate or two.

There aren't many traditional musical elements (melody, harmony, development) herein. The eight tracks might best be described as beatless minimal and melodic ambient; parts of it are certainly experimental. Foam has a habit of combining featherlight tics and swirls with knocks and bangs that push up hard against loudspeaker cones. The good news is that his productions skills make his EP a palatable listen.

I'll start with the album's seventh track, Widget, because I'm a hip-swinging mo-fo who can't count. The first thirty seconds of Widget are nigh-on silent; the next minute consists of a metallic sound (the widget?) carrying out Chinese water torture (not quite the same as American waterboarding, my pedantic and politically correct chums) on the listener's frontal lobes before an answering beep pans back and forth. The only other element is a lo-fi organ sound that plays a couple of chords before the track (and the listener's lust for life) peters out. I've decided via a process of elimination that it's an experimental meditative piece - because you certainly can't whistle it, sing it or dance to it. (And I'm running out of brackets.)

Next up is a new piece of technology that will augment the planet's already over-intrusive surveillance systems. Gum is full of synths that are pitched so high and, towards the end of the track, become so shrill that only people under forty will be able to hear them. If you can't hear them, you're too old or a Motorhead fan or you play banging techno in your tarted-up hatchback. Or all three. I'd like to see that Venn diagram.

That's got the two most challenging tracks out of the way. You'll have noticed, particularly with Gum, that the sound quality is superb. So it is with the first track on the album, Day-To-Day, where the toy-like sound of a looping nine-note melody forms a musical backbone, around which is wrapped Geiger Counter-ish glitches, and percussive one-shots that sound like out-takes from Wall-E. It's a happy track.

Crab Attack is not a musical description of a naval doctor's waiting room on a Monday morning. Instead, you'll be faced with low-passed, bubbling sine waves, noises reminiscent of a fridge that's been left open, and some glitchy percussion that Riverdances right up against your eardrums.

The two minutes of Trouble remind me of the relentless music used to brainwash Michael Caine in The Ipcress File. Play it while switching your kitchen lights on and off and the reverberating, ambient washes will have you under the KGB's thumb in no time. By the way, Caine + 1960s + John Barry are widely acknowledged as a very good thing indeed. Resistance is futile: you're now under Jeff Bezos's thumb.

Bumbleebee is the type of track that's starting to pop up on the soundtracks of indie puzzle games: a half-formed melody from an inoffensive synth with lots of glitches and bells popping up now and then to keep you awake. Like many such tracks, they will burble away in the background so that you can concentrate on other matters - but if you sit down and listen to them, they will mesmerise.

I've left Offthesky's remix of Madness until last to reward your perseverance. It improves on the well-built but bland original (think Jane Russell) by blending minimal with ambient to become something more enticing (think Sophia Loren). Your clapped-out Nokia/it-looked-ok-in-the-catalogue Panasonic/of-course-I-didn't-mortgage-the-house Bang & Olufsen will enjoy it.

I must explain to the trendier of my listeners that Archipel netlabel released Bu-Bu-Bubbles when wing collars and monocles were the height of fashion. My apologies to the label (and its enlightened policy of making their commercial albums available for free after a few months on sale) for taking so long to leave the Sea of Despond, crawl onto the beach, walk upright and develop ears.

I've tagged the album as "experimental" because CTW doesn't have a paradoxical category. There aren't many albums that could be described as "easy to listen to" but not "easy listening". Foam has a spiritual, transcendent quality. If you're looking for a non-theological musical path to spirituality/nirvana/chocolate/becoming a hipster emo, you could do a lot worse than listen to Bu-Bu-Bubbles, contemplate the ineluctable modalities of life and wonder whether it might help to use a different set of lottery numbers next week. Or you could send a thank-you email to Archipel or - the horror! the horror! - buy one of their commercial albums.

October 25, 2010

Regular readers of dusty old CTW know what to expect: (ir)regular reviews of free CC/netlabel albums, leavened with poor jokes and even worse grammar. It's rare that your humble scribe deigns to describe anything so ephemeral, so lightweight, so throw-a-bag-of-kittens-in-the-canal as a single track. But I do do it occasionally.

Today's internet eructation was prompted by my stumbling across a video made by Eirik Solheim, a project manager for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), who is very enthusiastic about technology, photography, and, in the most entertaining and truthful phrase that I've read this week, "stuff that I find important."

Anyway, he has made One Year In Two Minutes, which could be described as a nigh-on perfect ambient video, the ne plus ultra of everyday sights and sounds, or even the cappuccino venti of coffees if you're into using corporate drinks-vending metaphors. Mr Solheim visited the English Park in Oslo weekly for a year, snapped some photos and then compiled them ingeniously with Photoshop and Final Cut Express to produce a seamless and bladder-looseningly beautiful two-minute film of nature getting up for work and coming home to bed. The lovely visuals are accompanied by a truly ambient soundtrack recorded in situ; it's a hymn to rustling leaves, birds, rain and thunder. Be sure to select the "full screen" option by clicking on the little arrowed box in the lower right-hand corner of the video.

Which is nice of an award-winning, rather talented media maven, don't you think? I wonder if there are any musicians out there who would like to adapt the visuals or simply plonk their own music over the video? At this point, I must confess that CTW has been a little lax in discovering these films. They appeared two *cough* ago. What? I said, two *mutter* ago. All right, if you insist, the films were published two years ago. I can't be mega-trendy all the time, you know; I have toenails to grow. But wait, there's more goodness to come. How about another video on the same subject, but this time with people ghosting by in the background?

Lovely, mmm? And for the attention-deficit sufferers out there, here's a 24-carat ambient-minimalist jewel: One Year In 40 Seconds. I think it's the prettiest of all of Mr Solheim's work. It would make an ideal desktop video or screensaver.

If you have enjoyed these films, please think about sending Mr Solheim an appreciative email. If you haven't, send me an abusive one and I will endeavour to return to reviewing free albums and combing my hair in new and vaguely disturbing ways. Until then, please remember that free, CC-licensed stuff isn't evil; it's fun. And sometimes it can be beautiful.

October 19, 2010

To paraphrase Henry Ford, you can have any Broque netlabel album cover painted any colour you want so long as it is black and white. This, the latest in an unbroquen line of drab album covers, does its best to dissuade listeners from exploring Applause Phenomena, a classy minimal EP by Dennis Korsunski (A.K.A. Clapan, otherwise known as Information Ghetto), but Catching The Waves is made of stupid stern stuff. Advanced electronic rhythms from the Russian Black Sea coast via a Bavarian netlabel? Pah. It's all in a day's work for CTW. Chancellor Merkel, put your fat ankles up on a cushion and enjoy some multikulti.

The opener, About Chords, begins with skipping, scratching percussion that forms a spiky bed for the titular synth chords, which are either cold and distant, slathered in reverb and high-pitched delay, or upfront and cuddly. The contrast makes for an enjoyable listen. Yes, a driving hi-hat appears halfway through the track, as agreed in UN Resolution 1998 (Minimal Tropes Being For The Benefit Of Dancefloors), but that's merely there to keep your head nodding: the real interest lies in the off-stage noises and clever use of reverb and echoing pads that tar-and-feather the basic rhythm.

At eight minutes long, today's recommended track is a flagrant violation of CTW's renowned First Law of Dance Music (in short, two's company; three's a crowd), but I forgive it in the same spirit in which I forgive @stephenfry for jawing on and on: to quibble in the face of such good-natured entertainment would be churlish.

Applause Phenomena contains a number of Good Things: beautifully fashioned granular ticks and flecks; a rolling but polite kick drum; a splashy snare; groovy, good-natured vocal phrases; a bass line that sounds like an ogre turning over in his sleep; bursts of applause that are more like white-noise interjections than the usual hackneyed attempt to inject atmosphere; gentle pads and spooky lead synths that almost imperceptibly guide the ear through the plethora of sounds that tease the eardrum from left and right, near and far; and the dawning realisation that the track is unerringly getting groovier and yet more profound while at the same time kicking out like a potato-faced English footballer confronted by a wily continental.

At its best, minimal/techno/dance/insert-suitable-genre-name-here transcends its repetitive origins to become electronica or fast-paced ambient; something that has depth. It's not just about endlessly repeating a four-bar loop and hoping that listeners will dance around a pile of handbags and manbags on a nightclub floor. Enough of my pseudery. Press the little love triangle below and draw your own conclusions:

You're allowed to dislike it. But you'll have to return my spare snuggie and we can no longer be friends.

After that comes the "Less Softbeat" remix of the same track. It relies heavily on the goodwill engendered by the appearance of familiar elements. Sad to say, it's a competent but rather anonymous track that would have benefited from more melodic or percussive variety.

The "support" in Old Cool Support refers, I think, to the Amen Break-type rhythm underpinning the crunchy and distorted pads and stabs that ready you for a dance-floor banger. However, the appearance of a simple and slow three-note bassline confounds expectations, as does the appearance of a wildly panning and repitching pseudo-harpsichord. Once another synth pops in with a rhythmic hook and is joined by a shower of clicks and high-pitched pops and crackles, the track veers between funky profundity and profound funkiness. It came a very close second to today's recommended selection and is still hoping that drug tests will reveal that it was cheated of glory.

The last track, Snow Report, threatens to disappoint with its extremely unoriginal four-to-the-floor kick intro until superb, machine-tooled incidental noises flesh out the rhythm and warm synths float in from on high to reassure you that time spent listening to this album is time well spent. I'm fond of the brief stop-start breaks made from diamond-hard percussive elements that are dropped in a sea of reverb and then high-passed and panned out to the extreme edge of the stereo field.

Speaking of which, the whole album is a testament to Dennis Korsunki's production wizardry; in places he has squeezed the proverbial quart into a stereo pint pot, relying heavily on the fact that you've probably got two ears. (A mono recording wouldn't be nearly as impressive.) Imagine you're back at your schooldesk and enjoying (ha!) a maths lesson. Forget your pimples and your crush on the teacher, and concentrate on the protractor spread out in front of you. Now imagine a click, pop, burble, snap, drum, synth and bass placed on each line of the 180 degree arch. Each element has its own niche. Imagine further that each sound sits comfortably in its own spatial reverb and has had all its superfluous frequencies cut away. Suddenly, your ears can make sense of the dozens of sounds thrown at you. You can solve quadratic equations. You will go to Harvard and bang as many students with superb teeth as possible. Life is good, all thanks to free CC-licensed music supplied by a hard-working netlabel and a maverick Russkie.

Write 100 times: I must send a thank-you email to Broque netlabel. And comb your hair.

September 25, 2010

Kemuzik One is a compilation of folk-pop songs sung by guitar-clutching winsome individuals with tremulous and/or gravelly voices. There are three acknowledged reactions to this type of thing:

Buy a machine-gun;

Stick a candle in a bottle, chill out and enjoy the glory of life;

Get arrested by the roadside at three in the morning, drunk as a skunk, clad in nothing but a pair of baggy grey Y-fronts and bawling an old flame's name at the moon.

I chose the second option; guns are expensive. Option three can wait.

Kemuzik One is an unusual release, partly because it's not one of the (very nice) ambient & electronica albums that swamp the free music world, but mostly because it's a compilation that hasn't succumbed to the "one supermodel and her East German hammer-thrower friends on a girls' night out" paradigm.* There's a spookily high number of good tracks amongst the fourteen on offer, many of which have been supplied by stalwarts of the CC music scene, though I must point out that one or two of the tracks' endings suffer from harsh edits.

To demonstrate this unusual achievement, I'll work very hard and highlight the first track on the album, in the hope you'll be seduced by Dutchman Thijs Kuijken's ukelele and the seductive sing-a-long feel of a hymn to forestry, avians and flames. (Folkies, eh? Tsk.)

<a href="http://kemuzik.bandcamp.com/track/on-trees-and-birds-and-fire">On Trees And Birds And Fire by Kemuzik</a>

Continuing my laziness, let's move to the second track. Madelaine Hart has a smoky bottom range and a tremulous upper register, so comes off as a non-substance abusing Billie Holiday. Have a listen to Inside Out, wherein a Hackney-residing Australian (who played Glastonbury in 2009) will make your bottom lip wobble:

<a href="http://kemuzik.bandcamp.com/track/inside-out">Inside Out by Kemuzik</a>

You can pop along to Jamendo to download her two (criminally ignored) free albums or buy them from iTunes and Amazon if you want to help her out.

Cementing my slothness for all time, I come to the third track, Fragile Meadow by The Black Atlantic, who are fond of wibbling on about nature. It must be something in the Dutch water.

After mentioning that The Dada Weatherman's Painted Dream comes across as Dylan backed by a slightly confused Sibelius, and noting that the late blooming of electronica in Tim Fite's misery-fest Where Is My Woman is the only proof that Kemusik One was recorded in the 21st century, I'll leave you with Allison Crowe's Effortless, in which she croons over a piano and effortlessly evokes just about every shampoo advert ever made. La Crowe's current download figure at Jamendo stands at more than 120,000, which is a cheering thought.

Ill health and the nature of writing about a compilation has perforce meant a certain brevity in my descriptions; my apologies to the fine artists who I have neglected to mention. It might be an idea for curious (and curiouser) listeners to follow the links on Kemusik's Bandcamp page and see just how deep the free music rabbit hole goes. Please don't forget to thank the musicians and/or buy their commercial music.

My thanks to everyone responsible, especially Kemuzik supremo Przemek Bobnis, for adding this very welcome platter of free folk-pop sugar to the free music buffet. With most compilations, it's usually best to cut off the thick crust and keep the tasty but disappointingly small pie; you may find that Kemusik One will force you to loosen your belt a notch.